Regionalization Processes in Central Asia and Southeast Asia: Similarities, Differences, Challenges and Central Asia’s Integration Perspectives in the Light of the ASEAN’s Experience

Abstract This paper addresses the issue of the Central Asian regionalization and regional integration in the light of the experience of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)1. The purpose of this study is two-fold. On the one hand, it intends, via an approach under the prism of the ASEAN’s strategy of regionalization and regional integration, to provide an analytical framework for understanding current integration processes in Central Asia (understood as the five post-Soviet Republics, or “C5”). Indeed, despite their differences, the C5 and ASEAN integration process shares key common features. On the other hand, it aims at providing guidance on how to further proceed in Central Asia, precisely because both integration processes share similarities, although this does not imply that the ASEAN mode of integration can apply as such to the C5. Accordingly, this study makes also extensive policy recommendations whose criterion is the realistic development and consolidation in the long run of Central Asia’s regional autonomy and geopolitical empowerment in the light of the ASEAN experience.